It’s no secret that the bathroom scale and I are not friends. My relationship with the scale is not a healthy one. But as the numbers rise and fall, I tell myself that the scale doesn’t tell the whole story. I know that it’s a weight combination involving bones, muscles, fat, organs, and all the fluid in your body.

I know all of this but when I look at the scale and see the number it reflects back a number that I often tack onto my self worth. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. When number falls I am proud of myself, even if it's because I skipped meals to get that magic number. When the number rises I shame myself for the mistakes I made throughout the day that gave me that number in the first place. Honestly, it’s a losing battle. I teach my students to have self love and to say positive things to themselves instead of negative things. I even went as far as posting positive affirmations throughout the classroom. These are for me just as much as they are for them. The problem is that this is a battle I have had with myself for as long as I can remember so it’s what I am used to and it’s my “normal”. SOOOOO not healthy!​For me, it’s not lack of having the right tools and the know how to be in good health. No. My problem is I lack the motivation. I either have the food right and I’m not exercising consistently, or my food is off and I am working out compulsively. Knowing the problem is a good thing in the way that you might be able to fix it. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken!

So, I joined the team. Orange Theory Fitness, that is! Orange Theory Fitness, or OTF as they are known, is a gym that focuses on whole group fitness training with the use of High Intensity Interval Training and heart rate monitors. The idea is that you work out in different heart rate zones, and as long as you workout for at least 12 minutes in the orange zone (zone 4) you will continue to burn a higher amount of calories up to 36 hours after the workout. In zone 4 you are working hard! The better conditioned your heart is, the harder it is to get your heart into those higher zones. Have you ever worked out so hard that you almost threw up? You were probably in zone 5! ​

As I have trained for triathlons and marathons I have heard so much about heart rate training but didn't really have the tools or know how to do it. Yes, I could find out what the zones were and yes I had a chest strap to measure my heart rate but…. Then what? “What zone should I try to stay in? For how long? How do I track it?” I felt like I was shooting blindly in the dark. So I made the choice that everyone makes in that situation: I chose to do what I always do because it was the easier option. But OTF isn’t like that. You know EXACTLY what is going on! They have giant monitors above the workout equipment where your heart rate monitor information shows up and you can see in real time your heart rate and which zone you are working in. When the workout is over, you get an email with all your stats. You can even workout at home and have the heart rate monitor bluetoothed (is that a word?) to your phone so you can get a report of your workout. If it seems like a silly and unnecessary expense, it’s not! Heart rate training tells you exactly what is going on in your body. It takes all the guesswork out of “Am I working hard enough?” You get a report of how much stress your heart is under and how quickly it recovers after stress. To me, that is the goal of exercise. It shouldn’t be to have rock hard abs or a stellar figure (but you might get that as a side effect!) It should be to have a healthy heart!

I started following a guy named Andrew Cole Smith on YouTube who goes to OTF in Seattle and has been documenting his journey towards being fit. I discovered his videos while trying to decide on whether or not to join OTF. Needless to say, his videos convinced me to at least try it out. My plan is to blog about my journey with OTF. I may occasionally try to upload a video or something, but my video editing skills are rusty and I don’t have a proper program on my computer to do real edits. Just like in anything else, you can’t be successful without the right tools. If you’re thinking of joining OTF, check out his videos and I think you will see the benefits! At the bottom of this blog I have the icon "FITNESS PERSON" that he coined and the icon links to his merchandise page. Click HERE for his YouTube channel!

My OTF opens soon and I cannot wait to get started! I love HIIT classes and group workouts (unless I am running, then I prefer to be a lone wolf.) If I want to be successful, I need someone to hold me accountable and someone to push me to be better. A couple years ago I took a group fitness class from a guy named Sean and those classes would kick my ass every Saturday and I LOVE it!!! I think OTF will be a very similar style but instead of having my ass handed to me once a week, it will be twice! Memberships to OTF are not cheap and I couldn’t afford a monthly unlimited pass, so I signed up for the 8 classes a month pass. If I can get there twice a week I know I can do the rest of the work on my own. I have become friends with the owner of the Greenville, NC location and I know she will push me to be successful! (Toni, if you’re reading this, you should know that we all appreciate you bringing OTF to our town and helping us to get healthy!!)

​So here goes, OTF. We’re going to do this and we’re going to do this right!